Elisabeth Tova Bailey

ELISABETH TOVA BAILEY’s natural history/memoir, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, recounts her year-long observations of a wild Maine woodland snail. Her book has received a 2011 John Burroughs Medal Award for Distinguished Natural History and a 2010 National Outdoor Book Award in Natural History Literature. The true story of her interspecies relationship is reaching an international audience of both genders and is finding special homes in the fields of natural history, medical humanities, and creative nonfiction. Bailey’s essays and short stories have been published in The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, and the Sycamore Review. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations and a Notable Essay Listing in Best American Essays. A snail, Bailey likes to explain, has an extremely interesting life; its courtship is remarkable, its various natural abilities are astounding, it has a memory, and, just like humans, likes a comfortable place to sleep and very good food. Elisabeth Tova Bailey lives in Maine.

"Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.” —Winston Churchill on how he achieved so much in his life.